


the man from elpis

by kinpika



Category: Borderlands (Video Games)
Genre: 1000 word snapshots, Alternate Universe, Angel Survives AU, Gen, Runs concurrently with the events of TFTB
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:33:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26696074
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kinpika/pseuds/kinpika
Summary: For the first time in a long time, he acted. Angel lived, and vault hunters unknown to him finished off Handsome Jack for good. Except there's more than what is on Pandora, more vaults, more to find.
Kudos: 5





	1. Introduction

In her own words, Lilith would say that she wasn’t obsessing. Everyone else would say otherwise, but they also gave her such a wide berth, the words never even reached her, anyway.

And what could she possibly think, regardless? Closing her eyes, _bang_ , Roland falls. Her throat constricts, as she stands in front of the mirror, and the bruises were long gone, but she still remembered that collar. That _inhibitor_. It had been so long since she had felt so powerless, but in one sweeping moment, everything had come crashing down.

Still falling. She wasn’t allowed to pick up the pieces, not really. Had to keep her head up, keep everyone going. Nights were spent in front of the monitors, pulling through Hyperion information. Whatever files they could pull from The Bunker that hadn’t been set to auto-destruct. There was… a lot. Videos, memos, ECHOs, neatly stacked and filed away. Jack was maniacal, but there had to be something said for how organised he was.

Made things easier, Lilith had to guess. Except when she kept hitting the bumps.

**Access//.Angel=INCORRECT.INPUT**

Every time, without fail, Lilith would put in the magic words. _I love you_. Tried not to think about what it meant, to a little girl who bled purple, not red, in front of them, and to the man who ruined all of their lives. But always the same errors. Location not found. Incorrect input. Never had the right permissions, and even in the end it seemed, Angel was buried, unknown, a Siren that Lilith never met, and Jack made sure her grave was six feet deep.

It doesn’t stop her, of course. It’s like some little secret, to carry around olds electronic files and neatly written paperwork when the newer stuff was too encrypted. Papers her walls in it all. Maybe it was the Eridium getting to her. Eating at her. Even Mordecai had begun to comment on it, and Lilith wants to take his comments with a grain of salt, but he knows what rock bottom looks like.

Her rock bottom looks like her huddled over a screen, four in the morning, grainy video with no sound. Knows the exact time that the bullet will fire, still has the niggling thought she could’ve done something. But there’s differences, she’s sure of it. Like a fuzz, but not the memory kind. Something brushes over the screen, ripples from the lower left corner to the upper right. Rubbing at her eyes, Lilith stops only to catch herself being held by Jack. Her hand winds up massaging her throat, as it constricts. As she watches the flare, sending the Hunters away.

 _Enough_ for tonight. She had to stop. But it was so _hard_ to, when she lit up another two screens, watching the scene, different angles. Watching how the Eridium injectors crumbled under fire power, how Angel gradually fell. Hearing Jack scream in the background, and _there_. Right there, just as Roland falls, as Jack appears in person, the personification of hate and anger, something happens to the screen.

A knock at the door. Lilith doesn’t mean to be jumpy, but the gun in her hand is armed, loaded, pointed at the person on the other side.

Mordecai stands, every bit the face of disappointment, but he leads with a “we found one of Jack’s Vault Hunters,” instead. “ _Athena_.” Emphasis there, and Lilith squints through the low lighting to see that Mordecai was holding his gut a little tighter than normal.

“What the hell happened?”

Standing, Lilith crosses the distance in two and a half steps, only a little wobbly from the numbness in her legs. Been sitting down too long, she realises, and goes to prod at Mordecai. Except, _except_ , her hand freezes. Or he catches her by the wrist. And she sees something in the middle of his chest, gaping and open, gone in the next few blinks. His voice sounds far away. “Lil? What’s wrong?” Worry seeping in where she expected grumpy indifference. But the last few years had changed them all, hadn’t it?

“Nothing, nothing.” Waves him off, tries to find her feet. There was that tug at her gut once again, like a hook that was pulling her back. Calling her somewhere she couldn’t quite place, but Lilith knew if she followed the path, she would find the source. Her tongue feels heavy in her mouth, like the words wouldn’t form quite right. A taste, just there, left over. Gut clenching kind. _Eridium,_ singing out to her. “Just tired.” Didn’t want to say anything, couldn’t make anyone worry.

“You watchin’ the feeds again?” And Mordecai forgoes his usual amount of skirting around the issue, goggles up, eyes flickering over to where she had been set up. Lilith can only look in the other direction. Across the walls, she sees shapes, like little splats of markers. Indiscriminate in shape and size, but that hazy sort of purple. Her right hand finds her left shoulder, massaging the skin there. Trying to keep the pressure down on her tattoos.

Best to keep moving. If she continued to work, she forgot about it. “Vault hunter, right? Let’s see what answers she has.” Easing past Mordecai, Lilith knows that of all people, he probably was the one to talk to. The absolute _least_ judgemental person this side of Pandora. Just that she couldn’t find the exact wording, to admit it out loud. Everything was compounding, gradually building up just behind her eyes.

And Lilith knew she wasn’t all that great with stress, as it still managed to burst out with a fizz or with a bang. That’s why Roland was so good at leading. Good at compartmentalising. Her nails dig into her skin, almost breaking through. Don’t think don’t think _don’t think_.

Brick was standing in front then, clearly more disgruntled than usual. Arms folded, looking down at the woman they had tied haphazardly to a pole. Firing squad, lined and ready. Lilith breathes deeply, and steps out into the sun.


	2. Love

With a shrill _beepbeepbeep_ that echoes through the apartment, he jolts awake. Hands scrub at his face, blinking fiercely, alarm shutting off just as quickly as it had started. Too much of a blood rush, and Timothy could only fumble towards the end of what passed as a bed, holding his head right there. Breathing in deeply through his nose, too used to the grime and blood by now to be surprised, but his eyes slide shut anyway.

Focus, he thinks. Calm. It’s fine. Everything’s fine.

Another alarm goes off, and Timothy finds the particular application, shutting it down before it could get its fourth sound in. Snooze, he had hit snooze. That meant it was… _early_. Swinging his legs around now, it’s a struggle to get himself upright into a sitting position. Everything ached, a firm layer of dirt clinging to his skin. Rolling his right shoulder, aware of the patch that had long since gone dry, Timothy almost missed the lack of gravity on Elpis. But that meant missing that godforsaken moon, and he didn’t. Not at all.

Kicking his feet out to find his boots, pulls them on over who-knows-how-many-day-old socks. Laundry hadn’t been done. Whatever. _Whatever_. Timothy thought of Helios, almost missed the convenience. Finds himself standing at the window, staring up at that horrific ‘H’ in the sky, and finds the scars buried deep into his chin, his cheeks, his temples. Layovers of that ugly mask. Those staples. He could live without laundry for another day, if it meant being away from there.

Another sound starts this time, a little more delicate. Smothered, by the layers of clothing that had accidentally buried several devices. Fiddling with the ECHO-communicator, Timothy turns it over to find the name _Eurydice_ displayed in a blurred yet bright light. For half a second, he considers letting it ring out for a few more minutes, until his thumb runs over the receiver, and a tired face greets him.

_“You’re still alive.”_

“Tragically, I know.”

A smile plays at the corner of her mouth, but it drops almost immediately as she turns to look somewhere over her shoulder. When Eurydice turns back, there was the look of worry he was almost afraid to see, the kind that had him dig chipped nails into the palm of his hand. Don’t freak out just yet, Timothy has to tell himself, although his brain was already hardwired, that ten step plan on how to get out of the shithole he was in formed yesterday. “Eurydice?” he doesn’t mean to let his voice go up in a question, but the background noise wasn’t the familiar buzzing in his ears.

That was a heart monitor.

Timothy was sure that if one was connected to him, he would _probably_ manage to outdo it, but this wasn’t a competition. Eurydice had settled the ECHO-comm on a counter, facing the makeshift medical area they’d thrown together. Whilst the image was weak at best, not having a convenient and friendly neighbourhood Siren to amplify it, of course, Timothy could assume that they were running out of time. His eyes fell to the bag of contained Eridium, sealed in tubes, refined and ready to be used.

Whilst this would last them a few weeks, Timothy hoped, he knew that they were pushing it. Short of holing up at some old mining site altogether and praying bandits don’t decide to investigate, their options were getting limited. Eurydice would occasionally block the view of the ECHO-comm altogether, but he could hear the barely their inhales. Like tight sighs, strung together.

“What happened?” When she passes by for the fourth time, Timothy finds himself asking the question. Should he not wait on the last lot of refinement and head back? It would be a few more hours at least. That was the kicker though, in the grand scheme of things: they just didn’t know when everything would tip over, and that would be that. “Eurydice, answer me.”

Doesn’t mean for his voice to crack like that. Where it’s not him, but _him_. Wounds are still fresh for everyone, but Timothy didn’t expect anything else. One day he would shake off the habit, the verbal tics, just not today. “Sorry, sorry.” Quick, not quite right. Words unfamiliar. They feel strange in his mouth, because _Jack_ didn’t apologise.

Eurydice finally appears then, and he sees the look in her eye. Like she could leave, right then. Let the little girl on the bed die and not even care. Timothy wouldn’t blame her, probably, if she did. Maybe a little, and maybe he’d hunt Eurydice down for it too. Perhaps he thinks it hard enough that it shows on his face, as she grumbles under her breath, moving the ECHO-comm then. A _“put your mask on”_ comes through, almost a moment too late.

Brain a fraction slower than it should be, Timothy dives for the mask as she arrives at the side of the bed. Fixing it, Timothy lets the display turn on, the familiar whir fill his ears, as Eurydice says something aside to their charge. This mask, this was all his. Not that he was the technical whiz he would grudgingly admit Jack was, at the end of the day, this one was won during his early days on Pandora, and before becoming his own design. Covering the entirety of his face, going so far as to even mask the voice, nowadays it helped Timothy more than he would’ve realised back then. The added perks of monitors for his Digi-Jacks was so minor he didn’t even notice.

Eurydice says something that he doesn’t catch, but that was more to do with how things seemed to drown out a little. Even the buzzing noise in his ears went away for a moment. With the ECHO-comm turned on the bleary-eyed, somewhat conscious girl, Timothy had to admit that despite them getting through the worst part, with more hiccups to come no doubt, his heart swelled, just a touch, despite himself. Despite everything. They _did_ the impossible. “Hey, Angel. Welcome back.” 

**Author's Note:**

> i started most of this pre borderlands 3's release


End file.
